Nintendo World: Mario's Mystery
by mr-mcd2k3
Summary: Peach's party was going perfectly until her friend Toad was found, dead. Now it's up to the Mario Brothers to solve this uncanny murder mystery... before the culprit strikes again. [Rated PG for thematic elements] READ & REVIEW! FINALLY COMPLETE!!!!!!!!!
1. Prologue

Nintendo World: Mario's Mystery  
  
by mr-mcd2k3  
  
Disclaimer (for all chapters): All of the characters in this story belong to Nintendo of America Inc. unless stated otherwise. Thanks and enjoy!  
PROLOGUE  
  
"Luigi, could you pass the butter?"  
  
Mario's younger brother handed the fancy tray to Mario.  
  
It was really nice of Peach to go through all this trouble, Mario thought. The food, the atmosphere, the guests... everything was perfect. The princess had never thrown a dinner party before, but despite her previous apprehension she had definitely pulled through.  
  
"Peach, this is all wonderful." Mario leaned over and kissed Peach on the cheek.  
  
Peach blushed. "I'm glad you like it, sweet heart."  
  
Guests upon guests filled the castle. It was surprising that accommodations could be made for all of them. But, as Mario knew, a woman as perfect as Peach could pull anything off.  
  
All of a sudden a boom and a terrifying scream rang out through the long corridors of the castle.  
  
Peach leaped up. "What was that!"  
  
Mario and his brother followed Peach as she rushed down the hallway.  
  
Peach gasped as she approached Toad, her faithful servant and friend for years, who lay on the ground, dead. Peach lightly touched the bloody wound on his head; a deep red stained her glove. Peach lay her head on her mushroom-headed friend's chest and wept.  
  
Footsteps. Luigi's ears perked up. A figure clad in a black cloak disappeared at the end of the corridor. He sprinted as fast as he could.  
  
"STOP!" he shouted.  
  
He reached a dead end. Nothing. No one.  
  
But where...but how... he thought.  
  
Mario rubbed Peach's back; she couldn't contain the tears.  
  
"Oh Mario," she bawled, "who could have done such a thing?"  
  
"I don't know, Peach. I just don't know. But whoever did... we're gonna find him." The Italian man stood up. "We will." 


	2. Sleeveless

Chapter One: Sleeveless  
  
The tears of the princess flowed like a solemn river looking for escape.  
  
"Mario," she cried, "I don't understand. Who could have done something like this to poor Toad? What ever could he have done? And how will you find who did it?"  
  
"I...I just don't know, Peach," the plumber stuttered.  
  
Luigi, breathing heavily, said, "I gave the signal for all the doors and windows to be sealed. No one can leave! We're gonna find who... hey look!"  
  
Luigi bent down to the ground and picked up a crumpled piece of paper. His fingers lightly danced to the right across the one line of black ink as he followed the streaks of the smeared note.  
  
"Does it say anything, Luigi?" Mario asked.  
  
" 'Catch me if you can," the younger brother replied, squinting to decipher the smeared letters. "It has a star at the end."  
  
Peach sniffled. "This is awful! How will we ever catch him?"  
  
"Or her," added Luigi.  
  
"We need to keep this as a clue," Mario said, "Luigi, seal this in a bag, it could become an important clue later.  
  
Two Shy Guys, Peach's other assistants whom were clad in doctor's clothing, carried the corpse away.  
  
"Toad." Peach reached her hand out.  
  
Mario warmly hugged Peach as the body disappeared from vision.  
  
* * *  
  
"You ready ta crack the case, bro?" asked the very "Brooklyn-ized" Luigi of his brother who walked from Peach's room having lain her down.  
  
"Let's do this."  
  
"We gotta search for clues first!"  
  
Mario stroked his chin. "Hmm...where to start?"  
  
"I got it!" exclaimed Luigi.  
  
"Shy Guys! Wait!"  
  
No response.  
  
"Luigi," began Mario, "they're long gone now."  
  
"We need to look at that wound on Toad," Luigi responded, "we have to know what was used in the murder!"  
  
Footsteps could be heard racing back toward the brothers. It was the Shy Guys!  
  
"Yes!" cried Luigi, "I knew you two would hear me!"  
  
"We need a look at the body," explained Mario.  
  
They rested the corpse on the floor.  
  
Luigi stared at the wound closely.  
  
"Looks like this murdered had a pipe dream. Toad was bashed in the head with a heavy pipe."  
  
Mario sighed.  
  
"Thank you guys," Luigi said, "you were a great help."  
  
The Shy Guys took Toad away once more.  
  
"Now what?" Luigi asked Mario.  
  
"Why don't we go back to where the culprit escaped?" Mario suggested, "Let's have a closer look."  
  
* * *  
  
"Look Mario," exclaimed Luigi who was on his knees. "That same star on the note."  
  
"A permanent marker used to make that sketch on that tile panel, I deduct, Watson."  
  
Luigi rolled his eyes at his older brother's pathetic allusion.  
  
Luigi stood up and stood on the tile panel. It gave way and he fell into a pit below. His scream echoed through the halls as Mario jumped in behind them.  
  
They quickly covered from the awkwardly short fall. All that was in front of them was a large safe door. A note lay on the ground with the simple word, sleeveless.  
Can you figure out the combination to the door using the note the brothers found on the floor? It's pretty difficult to solve, but see if you can before I update! Please continue reviewing. The next part will be up soon!  
  
Mr-mcd2k3 


	3. The Chase

Chapter Two: The Chase  
  
"Sleeveless?" Luigi thought out loud, "what could that mean?"  
  
"Maybe it's a clue about what the combination is."  
  
Luigi pressed the side of his face onto the door of the digital, very high- tech safe.  
  
"I hear movement," Luigi said.  
  
"Someone's back there!"  
  
"You think, Mario!" Luigi sarcastically replied.  
  
The brothers were completely stumped. They sat on the cold, hard floor, trying their best to come up with ideas.  
  
"Hey, Luigi, I think I've got it!" exclaimed Mario. "You know on those puzzles where the letter a is one, b is two, c is three..."  
  
"Yeah!"  
  
"Maybe the combination uses those numbers!" Mario explained.  
  
"Maybe..."  
  
"All right there are four e's, three s's...uh...two l's and a v, right!"  
  
"I think so," said Luigi, sounding very unsure.  
  
"Let's figure out their numbers and add them all together!"  
  
Numbers whizzed through Mario's head. He mumbled his thoughts out loud. "S...19...5...e...v.multiply by 4... I got it!"  
  
"What's the code?"  
  
"I took all the numbers of the letters and added them all together...the answer is one, two, three."  
  
Luigi punched in the code.  
  
"Access denied," explained a computerized voice.  
  
"Aw man..." whined Luigi.  
  
"We've got a lot of thinking to do, Luie," said Mario.  
  
Silence. Silence. And more silence.  
  
"Hey, Mario! I think I'm onto something, have you heard of a pyramid word?"  
  
Luigi's older brother shook his head.  
  
"I read somewhere that sleeveless is English's largest pyramid word. A pyramid has letters in increasing amount."  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"You know! It has one v, two l's, three s's and four e's. The combination must have four, three, two and one in it."  
  
"I guess we were pretty close," observed Mario.  
  
"Yeah, but pretty close won't lead us to the murderer."  
  
Luigi's fingers danced along the keypad. Four...three...two...one.  
  
"Access granted," rang the voice.  
  
"Yes!"  
  
The door opened slowly into a dark room.  
  
A gasp rang out from the darkness. The brothers noticed a silhouette of a person, cloaked in black hurriedly stand up and begin to flee.  
  
"There he is, Mario!"  
  
"Let's go."  
  
The criminal ran through the darkness and reached a wall, the Mario brothers close behind. The cloaked person grunted as he jumped up into the ceiling. The brothers reached the dead end and looked up. They could see the criminal using the wall to climb up though the series of air ducts.  
  
"Let's go!" shouted Mario, jumping up into the ducts before Luigi.  
  
Mario saw the culprit reach the top of the duct and exit. Mario got the top soon after, annoyed that he'd failed to get a glimpse of the criminal's face.  
  
Mario hit his head on the top of the duct.  
  
"Mario," Luigi called from underneath him, "ya gotta crawl!"  
  
Mario got down on his hands and knees and began to crawl, but the criminal was nowhere in sight. Luigi lifted himself up through the vertical duct.  
  
"Oh no, there are three routes!" Mario exclaimed.  
  
"You go through the middle!" shouted Luigi, "I'll go right!"  
  
The brothers split up and began crawling through the ducts.  
  
A-ha, thought Mario. He could see the culprit not too far ahead of him. He was going the right way.  
  
"Stop!" he shouted. The criminal began to get farther and farther ahead of Mario.  
  
All of a sudden, Mario felt a blast, stronger than almost anything he had ever felt. Oh no, it was the air conditioning.  
  
The power of the blast sent him backwards. He struggled to get up, noticing that the culprit wasn't having nearly as difficult of a time maneuvering through the ducts.  
  
Mario's dry eyes could barely see a thing. Then suddenly, before he could react, he felt the metal beneath him giving way.  
  
"Aaahh!!!" Mario fell to the castle floor with a thud.  
  
Mario stood up and angrily kicked the wall, resisting the tempting urge to swear.  
  
"I can't believe I let him get away!"  
  
Luigi came walking through the hallway.  
  
"I went the wrong way and ended up here in the hallway," explained Luigi, "what happened to you?"  
  
Mario, busy rubbing the sore spot on his butt, pointed up at the hole in the ceiling that revealed the broken air duct.  
  
It was then the brothers noticed that a support beam was missing from under the air duct.  
A/N:  
  
Thanks for reading this chapter; I hope you enjoyed it. It had quite a few clues in it that will help you figure out who the murderer is! Please review and give me some ideas about who you think the criminal is as the story unfurls. Please continue to play along and actually use the clues in the story to figure out who-done-it! Again, don't forget to review, and also check out my other stories by clicking my pen name! Thank you!  
  
mr-mcd2k3 


	4. Piecing the Clues Together

Chapter 3: Piecing the Clues Together  
  
"I wonder what happened to that beam?"  
  
"Yeah, and it's right under the spot where I fell through, too."  
  
Luigi walked towards the spot where the beam was missing.  
  
"Mario," said Luigi, "look at the other support beams. Look at their shape."  
  
Mario walked over, "Yeah, so what?"  
  
"Can't you see it! That's the exact same shape of the bruise on Toad's forehead."  
  
"Yeah, you're right," observed Mario.  
  
"Okay, we're really onto something now. The murderer used the beam structure to," said Luigi, "You got the other clues?"  
  
Mario held up the bags. "Right here!"  
  
"The notes, the beam, it's all fitting together!"  
  
"But we don't even know who the murderer is!"  
  
"Oh yeah..."  
  
Luigi reached into his back pocket. He pulled out a small sketchpad.  
  
"For your information, I've been sketching a rough drawing of the culprit based on the clues we've gotten so far."  
  
"Let me see." Mario took the pad from his younger brother's hand. "Well you're really getting close, Luie."  
  
"The only way to have been able to get that beam would be to hang onto it."  
  
"Hmm..."  
  
"I've got some suspicions, Mario, and I might know who did it. I just need to perform one final test."  
  
* * *  
  
The brothers spent another hour piecing together clues, finally determining that the culprit had to have been at the table behind theirs.  
  
"Who sat at that table tonight, Mario."  
  
"Um...Captain Falcon, Wario, Waluigi, Daisy, Donkey Kong and Iggy."  
  
"Hard to believe you just named a murderer," lamented Luigi, "well it's time for my test."  
  
* * *  
  
"Now, I am sad to say that the criminal sits at this table," sighed Mario, "so, in order to find out who it was, my brother would like a simple test to be performed."  
  
Luigi stood forward and sighed heavily. "Men," he eyed Daisy, "and woman... this may seem like a crude test, but it is one of the few that will expose the criminal. People on the right side of the table will pass their spoons to the person on the opposite side of the table. The process will be repeated once more, except the other way around. You may only use one hand to catch the spoon. Go."  
  
The brothers watched closely as the spoons were thrown back... and then forth.  
  
"The right-handed ones are on the right side of the table and the lefties are on the left side," observed Mario, having paid close attention to the hands used to catch the spoon.  
  
"So Waluigi, Captain Falcon and Iggy are right handed, huh?" said Luigi.  
  
"So, who is it?" Waluigi asked.  
  
"Yeah?" said Daisy.  
  
"Who?" inquired Iggy.  
  
The brothers' eyes dashed toward the culprit.  
  
"Luigi, we have a match..."  
  
A/N: I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Please review. And in your reviews, please tell me who you think the criminal is and why. You should be able to figure it out with all the clues from previous chapters. Feel free to re-read older chapters to refresh yourself. Thanks! The final chapter will be online very soon. In the meantime, figure out the mystery...  
  
-mr-mcd2k3 


	5. Showdown

Chapter 4: Showdown  
  
"Me?" the criminal asked, "what do you mean, me?"  
  
"The evidence is clear," said Luigi, "you hung on that support beam first, dismantled it, then used it to bash Toad over the head!"  
  
A unanimous gasp from the rest of the ones at the table sucked the air from the room.  
  
"We knew the criminal was left handed because of that note you left, you know the sleeveless one."  
  
"Those smears meant that your hand moved across the ink, smearing the note. Only left hands do that as much as was smeared on the note."  
  
"I'm not the only left handed one here!"  
  
"It had to be a person small in size, such as... a woman," said Mario.  
  
"Wario and DK are way too big to have gotten away from us through the ducts," Luigi explained, "and you were able pass over the spot where the structure was missing. Since I couldn't go over it and you could, that means whomever it was had to be lightweight."  
  
"Daisy," said Mario pointing his finger at the young woman, "it's the end of the line."  
  
Daisy's brow furrowed. She stood up on the table, her heel deep in casserole.  
  
"That's right brothers," she began, "it was I. And you know what if I had the chance I'd do it again!"  
  
The tears once more began to flow like a river. The princess approached her younger sister.  
  
"Daisy," she sobbed, "how could you?"  
  
"I was sick of all the time you spent with him," growled Daisy, "I thought you were my best friend, Peach. And if I couldn't have you..." her voice began to break, "...then neither could he!"  
  
Daisy quickly leaned down and picked up the silver platter on the table. She swung will all her might and made direct contact with Mario's head. He fell to the floor. She threw the platter down and leaped off the table. Her feet carried her through as she fled.  
  
"Not on my watch," murmured Luigi. The chase was on.  
  
Footsteps pattered through the hallway as Luigi chased Daisy.  
  
"Run, run as fast as you can," Daisy taunted, "you can't catch me, I'm murder woo-man!"  
  
"Daisy, stop, this doesn't have to be this way!" Luigi called.  
  
"Shut up!" she demanded before eying the fiery torch that lit the hallway.  
  
Luigi ran as fast as he could to catch up with her but stopped when she grabbed the torch and held it between herself and him.  
  
The crazed look in her eyes scared Luigi, but he had to be brave.  
  
"Nothing is gonna stop me!"  
  
She threw the torch onto the ground. Luigi had no idea how the fire started, but it engulfed the space between Daisy and himself.  
  
"See ya!" said Daisy before beginning to run away again.  
  
Luigi had no idea as to what to do. He knew he was desperately afraid of fire, but he had to stop Daisy. He could see her climbing up into the air duct from the broken spot.  
  
A light bulb went of in his head at just that moment. Luigi darted the other way.  
  
He found the panel where he and Mario had fallen underground. The stamped on the panel and entered quickly entered the sleeveless code into the safe door. After it opened, he jumped into the duct.  
  
Daisy fell from the duct onto the floor with a thud. She brushed herself off as she stood up.  
  
"Yes!" she whispered, "I knew I'd get away. Now I just gotta find a door and...  
  
"I don't think so Daisy."  
  
"What!?"  
  
She turned around only to see Luigi glaring in her direction. She turned the other way. A dead end.  
  
"Come with me..."  
  
"Luigi! I...I...aw, man... I forgot my line!"  
  
Luigi stuck his tongue out. "Aw, Dais..." He began to laugh.  
  
"All right!" the director yelled into the loudspeaker, "again, from the top!"  
  
Maybe the scene would go better next time.  
  
THE END  
  
A/N:  
  
I hope you enjoyed my story! Betcha didn't expect that surprise ending. Did you figure out that it was Daisy? Post your reviews and let me know what you thought overall! Updates will now begin again on "A Tale of Two Sisters." Thanks for reading!!!  
  
-mr-mcd2k3  
  
P.S. Don't forget to review!!! 


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